


Shoulder the Burden

by roswyrm



Series: Deadlands [2]
Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: (how is there not a tag for jailbreaks), Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Ambiguous Slash, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Hugs, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Minor Monster Death, Monsters, NOW THAT BEING SAID, Near Death Experiences, and the object of their affections is heavily implied to have not left their side?, and then they wake up in a hospital bed, of sorts, that being said this also got very queer very quickly so ya know, that but instead of love interest its fletcher's new adopted family, you know that trope where someone almost dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roswyrm/pseuds/roswyrm
Summary: There are three things that Nathaniel Fletcher knows for sure:1. He’s a pretty good thief.2. Fleeing is always the reasonable choice.3. Shooting spooky things is easier with your eyes closed.





	Shoulder the Burden

**Author's Note:**

> uhhhhhhh there's another part to this coming and maybe that'll be the part where i can finally figure out how to write the idiot cowboys kissing. maybe. probably not. anyway this is all ari's fault (the-navigator-knows-the-way on tumblr, have a scroll) and im still here sitting in my trashpile of deadlands feelings. now listen this does get kinda angsty but also they all live and kinda work through some problems. and also they live. did i mention that they live, instead of dying, horrifically? it's very important to me that y'all know that they live and do not die.
> 
> hem hem.
> 
> anyway, _(JONNY)_ they're all alive and are mostly okay even if significantly traumatised. enjoy!

Shooting spooky things is easier with your eyes closed. It’s harder to aim, obviously, but it also means Fletcher’s less likely to scream like a little girl when he sees a skinned-raw _something_ tearing toward him. Screaming would bring more of them, so he keeps his eyes squeezed shut and only shoots when he hears howling getting _very_ close to him. Fletcher may be a spineless coward, and he’s okay with admitting that, but he doesn’t want to shoot at a scrabbling sound and hear Carl or Cigarillo or Zeke give a pained cry. Fletcher doesn’t want to hurt them; they’re going to save him from this awful ledge he’s found himself on, and they’re useful.

(They might even be somewhat likable, on the good days.)

The thing is, (the thing that Carl warned them about) the skinned-raws are smarter than the rest of the dead ‘uns. Not that any of them listened. He’s senile, dementia-ridden, he couldn’t have any idea what he was talking about. They forgot the first skinned-raw, the one that wrapped itself up in Blackjack Bronson’s skin, the one that nearly killed them all. Fletcher forgot about it too, but he’s brutally reminded when long claws sink into his shoulders, and a hissing voice drawls, “Now, what do we have here?” Fletcher squawks and his eyes fly open of their own accord, and _augh, yep, those things are still ugly._

The skinned-raw jerks him out of his hiding place before turning its head up to the sky and _howling,_ a sound that Fletcher is going to do his damnedest to forget. The damage is already done, and dead ‘uns starts crowding around beneath him as Fletcher feels himself being lifted off the little step he’d found. He’s got Cigarillo’s gun. It has better range than his derringer, and he’s too scared to get close to anything with that little gun anyway. The kid might kill him if he breaks the gun gripped tight in his shaking hands. “Ca-caw,” Fletcher shrieks because it’s not like it’ll attract anything that isn’t already on its way, “ca– for fuck’s sake, _help me!”_

The skinned-raw laughs and Fletcher is scared out of his mind, but he still has a gun. He sticks the barrel into its chest and wishes he had a one-liner as he fires straight through the thing’s heart. He settles for his best approximation of Zeke’s rebel yell, though it comes out more like a high-pitched, horrified yelp.

And then he’s falling.  
///\\\\\///\\\\\//\\\\\  
The main reason Fletcher isn’t expecting to wake up is that dead people don’t typically do that. And he _has_ to be dead, he fell from three stories up. Ain’t nothing that can save a man from a fall like that.

Except, when he groans and blinks open his eyes, he doesn’t want to eat any of the faces peering down at him, so that’s a good sign. He starts to ask _what happened? Am I a dead ‘un? Are my legs broken? Please don’t let my legs be broken, I need those for fleeing,_ but something is pressing his tongue down that’s forcing air into his lungs and then sucking it back out again. Fletcher does the only sensible thing he’s capable of: screaming like a little girl.

The world is muffled beneath the sound of blood rushing in his ears (dead ‘uns don’t have blood, do they?) and the adrenaline making his limbs jittery and over-spent, but he thinks he hears Carl calling for someone and he thinks he feels something squeezing his shoulder, and he thinks—

“Shut up,” Zeke growls, and that makes him even more terrified, but he stops screaming. Zeke isn’t the kinda guy Fletcher’s gonna disobey, especially not when he’s probably dead. He squeezes his eyes shut tight again, just in case he starts seeing a face he _does_ wanna eat.

Although. Zeke hasn’t shot him. Zeke would have shot him if he were a dead ‘un, right? Zeke doesn’t completely hate him, but that doesn’t mean the big guy wouldn’t shoot him. The pressure leaves his shoulder and refocuses on his hand, squeezing so tightly Fletcher thinks he’s gonna lose circulation. If he still has circulation. “He’s okay, right?” Cigarillo squeaks and Fletcher wants to apologize for breaking his gun. He thinks he remembers clutching the thing to his chest as the skinned-raw let him fall backward though, so maybe he saved it from the worst of the impact.

Something pats him where there are still wounds in his shoulder, and Fletcher whimpers in pain. “Don’t you worry about him, lad! He’ll be right as rain,” Carl assures the kid, and Fletcher’s… probably fine? ‘Fine?’ Fine. In a relative sense of the word, at least.

Soft footsteps reach his ears, and then the metallic taste leaves his mouth, and he can breathe under his own power again. “Y’all best be leaving soon,” a crackling voice says. Fletcher peeks out of one eye to see a wrinkled nurse with long white hair tied back in a bun. She’s looking above him, eyes focused entirely on Carl. “I did the best I could, but the sheriff’s coming back, and he ain’t gon’ see your heroics the way the town did.” Carl nods serenely, and the nurse sighs. She pats the Yorkshireman on the shoulder. “Stay safe,” she instructs, and then she’s gone again.

Carl beams out the door and calls after her, “Thank you kindly, Adeline!” Fletcher squints up at the old man. He’s gonna ask about that later. He looks over to find Cigarillo white-knuckling his hand, looking terrified as anything. 

Fletcher attempts a smile and squeezes his hand back. “You guys look awful,” he laughs. The kid drags him up and hugs him uncomfortably tight, and Fletcher winces as his shoulders twinge. “Ack– okay, yep, that’s– Christ, it’s like someone died!”

Zeke huffs. Fletcher grins up at him, all charm, and then very quickly stops when the bruiser grits out, “That ain’t funny.” Fletcher giggles a bit hysterically, looking away from the big guy in favor of hiding his face in Cigarillo’s shoulder. The kid’s overheating, or maybe Fletcher’s just chilled from his brush with death, but the arms around him leave patches of warmth as Cigarillo squeezes all the remaining life out of him. “C’mon. We need to go.” The kid lets go easy, scrambling back like _Fletcher_ burned _him._ Zeke hauls him out of the hospital bed by his lapels, and Fletcher’s shoulders scream in protest at the sudden movement. 

Zeke sets him down on his feet so roughly that Fletcher’s knees nearly give out. He scrabbles at the big guy’s forearms to hold himself up and shrills, “Ow, owow _ow– I-don’t-think-I can-walk!”_ His legs don’t hurt as bad as the skinned-raw’s claw marks do, but Fletcher’s pretty sure that if he had to take more than two steps, he’d collapse. 

Zeke makes a growling noise. Fletcher prays desperately that he doesn’t just drop him. “Someone help him outside.” Carl grabs Fletcher by the wrist and tucks himself beneath Fletcher’s arm to help him stand. Fletcher smiles at him gratefully, and the old man makes a bunch of deflecting noises as they start out the door.  
///\\\\\///\\\\\///\\\\\  
Cigarillo keeps giving him worried looks over the campfire, and Zeke doesn’t do much but glare. Fletcher stares resolutely at his own shoes and pretends he doesn’t know what they’re thinking. Carl seems oblivious, happily chattering on about… god, what the hell is he chattering about? Something about a job he pulled off with Blackjack. Fletcher figures it doesn’t matter as long as it isn’t about anything he’ll need to remember next time they get stuck in one of the spook zones. They shouldn’t be going through one of those for a while, so Fletcher’s using the time to learn how to ride sidesaddle, because dresses are _not_ made for riding like a normal person, which makes Fletcher an even weaker link than he already was with his injuries.

(Not that he mentioned this last bit to the group. He can see it in their eyes whenever he flinches at a coyote howl, or if he has to go any higher than the first floor. They don’t make him be lookout anymore. Fletcher doesn’t want to hear what they really think of him, not now that he’s started to maybe, kinda, sorta warm up to them.)

The fire starts dying down, and Carl starts yawning, and Cigarillo starts clenching his jaw trying not to yawn. “I’ll take first watch?” Fletcher offers.

He waits for Carl to start snoring, and he waits for Zeke to snort and roll over in his sleeping bag, and he waits another half hour waiting for something to happen. Something like a sign (not that he’s ever really gone in for miracles) that he should stay. 

The desert is blank and endless — no miracle in sight.

So Fletcher stands up and starts toward his horse. He’s dead weight in a pretty package; it’s better if he leaves. The only thing that might have stopped him was worry for Cigarillo, but Fletcher’s sure the kid can fit on Zeke’s horse just fine until they get him a new one. Sacramento whinnies softly, and Fletcher shushes him. He starts tacking him as quickly as he can manage, which is to say, he’s tangled in reins and bits and a saddle blanket when Cigarillo asks, “You going somewhere?”

Fletcher tenses up. Folks say it’s fight, flight, or freeze, and Fletcher’s never been a fighting man. He whirls around to see Cigarillo looking up at him from his sleeping bag. “I was just, uh, checking the horses!” Fletcher defends. “ In case, y’know, anything… tried to… get them,” he finishes lamely. The kid frowns up at him, and in the last dying embers of the fire and the faint, clouded-over moonlight, Fletcher can see big, watery blue puppy-dog eyes. Damn him for getting his hair cut so it’d stop blinding him. Damn him for looking so sad. Damn him for making Fletcher care.

Cigarillo doesn’t move toward him, just lies where he is, looking miserable. Fletcher knows that this is a guilt trip. He still falls for it, untangling himself and setting himself back down next to the dying fire. He wishes he could get Zeke’s gravelly voice telling him _it might attract attention_ out of his head. It’s literally freezing, and maybe the fire would help.

The kid keeps pouting up at him, though, even after Fletcher settles himself in for watch. “You look cold,” Cigarillo says after a long moment. Fletcher shrugs. He _is_ cold, but the sooner Cigarillo stops feeling responsible for him, the sooner he can get out of the group’s hair. There’s more silence, nothing except Carl’s snoring and crickets and the icy wind, and then, “Move over.”

Fletcher splutters, “What? No, this is my spot, I got it—” Cigarillo plops down next to him and leans his head into Fletcher’s arm— “f-fair, and… square. What are you doing?”

“I don’t think Sacramento would be happy with just the one of us,” Cigarillo says, like that was the question Fletcher asked him. “So we gotta stick together. You can’t leave without me.” Fletcher tries to think of what he can say to that, fails, and decides to just move so that Cigarillo is wrapped up under his arm. “You shouldn’t leave at all,” Cigarillo mumbles, soft and high into Fletcher’s rib cage, “we need you. You’re a really good thief.”

Fletcher smiles bitterly at the ashes. “I’m nothing much,” he points out. The Fletcher that found himself in the cave with a bunch of idiots would have agreed in a heartbeat, but now. “Not compared to you. ‘Greatest outlaw this country’s ever seen,’ right?” He doesn’t mean for it to sound so sad, or so unbearably fond, but it’s a little late now.

Cigarillo hums, all judgy-like. He asks, “Didn’t you hear Miss Adeline? We’re not outlaws anymore. We saved a whole town from dead ‘uns and a skinned-raw; we’re _heroes!”_ Fletcher looks down at him to find the kid beaming, big blue eyes lit up from the inside and from the stars shining down on them. Blue-grey, actually, now that Fletcher is closer. Like the sky when it’s trying to make up its mind whether or not to rain. “You were the one that killed the skinned-raw,” Cigarillo says quietly, and the cold air falls away as the words puff warmly across Fletcher’s skin, “you’re the biggest hero out of any of us.” You could stick a constellation between Cigarillo’s ears, and his eyes still wouldn’t shine as bright as they’re shining at this moment. There’s a whole galaxy reflected in the look he’s giving Fletcher.

Fletcher leans away. 

“That’s a low bar,” he chuckles, “that is a low, _low_ bar.”

Cigarillo hums again, sad and judgy in equal measure, settling in further against Fletcher’s side. It isn’t long before the kid’s asleep, breathing steady plumes of steam into the freezing air. Fletcher could move him. Fletcher could ease the kid out from under his arm and take off.

Fletcher could also freeze to death, without any blankets or the warmth of the body next to him.

He figures it’s better to wait, staring out at the desert, waiting for sunrise. Or, at the very least, for second watch to come so he can shake Cigarillo up and get him to move.  
///\\\\\///\\\\\///\\\\\  
Fletcher is dead weight, but he’s dead weight with a gun, a plan, and some lockpicks, and that’s more than anyone else can say. “Miss me?” Fletcher whispers through the bars of the jail cell the old man got thrown into. Carl is up in half a second (for someone with a bad hip, he sure moves fast) to rattle the bars. The door creaks loudly as it opens some, and Fletcher mutters, “Hey, shush! We’re doing this my way: quietly. Hold tight.” He passes the old man’s gun through to him.

Carl makes a face like he’s constipated, which Fletcher has come to recognise as his ‘I don’t like this’ face. Fletcher decides he doesn’t care as soon as the gun leaves his hand, and he sneaks to where he knows the kid is. Fletcher knocks on the bars and whispers, “Ca-caw!” Nothing. Slightly louder, _“Ca-caw!”_ And still nothing, so Fletcher hisses, _“Cigarillo!”_ A mass of gray in the corner shifts, and Cigarillo’s wind-burned face peeks up at him from beneath a pile of blankets. Fletcher grins at him and starts picking the lock of his cell. And really, the locks are absolute garbage; Fletcher could have picked them with a pair of bobby pins and one hand tied behind his back. 

The lock opens, causing the door to creak a bit, and Fletcher eases Cigarillo’s gun through the opening. “Stay put,” Fletcher warns. Cigarillo really ought to stop wearing his heart on his sleeve, because Fletcher can see the hurt and worry and nerves playing in his head all too easily. “I’m getting you all out, I swear,” Fletcher assures him. And then he lets himself smile. “After all, we gotta stick together.” And it’s only a tiny jail in a tiny town, and it’s only four words, but as soon as it makes it out of his throat, Fletcher knows it for a promise. As close as he can let himself get to a vow that he won’t flee them like he’s fled everything else.

(He nearly says something dumb, like _‘I can’t leave without you’_ or _‘what kind of hero would I be if I didn’t rescue my friends?’_ or, worst of all, _‘I need you.’_ He bites it back. That was weeks ago; Cigarillo probably doesn’t remember the first night he slept on Fletcher to keep him from running away.)

Zeke is… _less_ immediately accepting of Fletcher. “What did I think the first skinned-raw was?” he snarls.

Fletcher doesn’t take offence. This is expected now, asking questions to make sure it’s really who you think it is. Fletcher is a first-class coward, so coming back for them despite the danger doesn’t exactly fit his MO, and they don’t know what happened to him since they got locked up. “Coyote,” Fletcher answers easily, “but you said it really weird. I mean, what kind of person says it like ‘kee-YOE-tee,’ honestly!” The lock clicks open. “The horses are out front—” Fletcher starts, but before he can hand the big guy his club and say, _‘now follow me quietly, we’ll go get the others’_ he’s being grappled. 

Fletcher tenses as his shoulders flare up with pain under Zeke’s hands squeezing the life out of him. “You’re a damn fool,” Zeke tells him, and Fletcher wonders if he’s gonna die because he forgot something from half a year ago, “comin’ back here.” 

Coming _back._ So Fletcher remembered right after all. But if Zeke knows it’s him, why the hell is— unless. 

No. 

No, there’s no way. 

“Is this a _hug?”_ Fletcher chokes out, no small measure of shock coloring his voice. Zeke drops him and snatches his club out of Fletcher’s hand. 

The big guy doesn’t even slow down, he just starts marching past the other cells, not looking back at the man who just _saved him from a hanging._ Ungrateful. “Checkin’ you were you,” Zeke says gruffly, “you flinch when folks touch your shoulders.” And yeah, he does, but the big guy could have just clapped him on the shoulder or something.

Zeke _hugged_ him.

(Fletcher knew he was a big softy deep down.)

Zeke bashes his club down on the lock that Fletcher just picked, and Fletcher winces at the crash as Cigarillo’s cell is busted open. “Horses’re out front,” Zeke says, “let’s go.” There’s a clamour from the sheriff’s office, and Fletcher runs ahead to yank Carl’s door open.

“We’re fleeing!” Fletcher yells, and the old man is running with them, whooping victoriously. So much for quiet.

(Fletcher doesn’t think he minds, though.)

**Author's Note:**

> im on tumblr @roswyrm come find me!! come talk to me!!!! come throw compliments or criticisms or prompts at me!!!!!! i dont know when part three is coming, but it should be doing that? at some point, at least.


End file.
